Archaeologists discover tunnel used in legendary Holocaust escape

In 1944, with the end of World War II looming, Jewish prisoners in the Lithuanian extermination camp Ponar devised a plan. The prisoners were being forced to dig up and burn the bodies of murdered Jews as the Nazis scrambled to hide evidence from the approaching Soviet army. The prisoners knew that once their work was done, they too would be killed. So, using spoons found among the corpses, the prisoners dug a tunnel from their holding pen to the outside. On the last night of Passover, the prisoners slipped into the tunnel to attempt escape.

Of the 80 prisoners in the holding pen, only 12 managed to get away and 11 survived until the end of the war to tell the tale. Since then, their 100-foot tunnel has been lost to history — at least, until now. A team of archaeologists and cartographers believe they have finally found the Ponar tunnel thanks to the use of radio waves at the site, The New York Times reports. The team has also discovered burial pits, including one containing the ashes of an estimated 7,000 people and another containing an estimated 10,000 bodies, using the technology.

"If we had never discovered the tunnel, people would have thought in another 20 years it was a myth, and they would have questioned — what do we really know happened? This is a great story about the way that people overcame the worst possible condition, and still had this hope that they could get out," team leader Richard Freund said.

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Read more about the tunnel escape and the history of Ponar in The New York Times.